Compost
by CeeCeeSings
Summary: Compost is something created from discarded scraps and dying matter, turning these things into a viable source of life and sustenance. Eventual Caryl, but also the story, in snapshots, of how two such viable scraps become life-sustaining. Story starts beginning of season 1 with new material and in-canon scenes...
1. Fermentation

She wonders about her garden.

It's the only thing she cares about, really, other than Sophia. She doesn't even put herself into that category: "Things She Cares About". She doesn't care about herself, not particularly. She retains personal value due to one thing: Sophia. To care for her. To protect her. From whatever the hell is happening now. From the world. From her father.

There is always so much to do. Cooking, cleaning, washing, keeping an eye on the children. And oh, yes. Staying alive. Because, as the book of Revelations always warned, the dead are now walking the earth. The dead, who now reign, with the clouded orbs of their eyes, and the dulled, worn crowns of their teeth.

They picked up with the group from Atlanta, Ed grudgingly agreeing they could do a lot worse than fall in with the brawny, handsome Shane, who exuded a rough-hewn, untamed masculinity under his "Shucks, ma'am," small-town cop veneer. Something in him spoke to Ed and screamed silently at Carol. He would protect them, oh yes. For his own purposes. All they had to do was relinquish power, and fall in line.

No problem there. She has no power. Wouldn't know what to do with it if someone handed it over in a big, wrapped box with a bow.

So. Now she has three masters: God, Ed, Shane. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The triumvirate.

She is afraid of the mobilized dead, but she has lived with fear so long, she absorbs it more readily than some of the others. She looks at the other women, with their long, shiny hair and shell-shocked eyes and furrowed brows and envies them. This has been a terrible, horrifying shock. For her it has been...

Well...

Dare she admit it? _Exciting. _

Yes, that's the word. Excitement is when fear meets the awe-inspiring, no? The fear that Carol has lived with, for so long, forever, it seems, has been the fear of the known. The fear scrubbed into worn, dirty, linoleum floors of her pale kitchen, the fear clutched in the greying stubble of her shorn head, the fear in the metallic _snicking_ sound of Ed's key in the lock when he came home at 3 in the morning, reeking of cheap draft beer and another woman's sweat.

The fear was still there yes, of course. But now, there is a little tug in her mind, a shred of string she forgot existed, pulling on her. This idea: that things could be _different_. That things could _change. _Until that day a few weeks ago, when she turned on the television, her Bible in one hand and Sophia's fingers wrapped around the other, Carol thought she knew the plot of her life, an unwavering, continuously greying line towards death, and salvation, with the occasional sunburst of happiness that was her daughter. It was all there, stretched out before her.

But then..._change_.

_Fermentation._

_Dead and living things, reconfiguration, mixing to create a new composition of the world. _

Carol thinks again, of her garden. She grew the flowers because their beauty lightened her heart; she grew the vegetables, the herbs, because she wanted to feed her family. Once the most precious thing she'd ever grown was out of the house every day, in school, she needed something to do. Ed refused to let her work, and it never crossed her mind to challenge the idea.

But her caregiver's soul needed to tend to something, and plants had a better chance of surviving Ed's temperament than a pet did. (Of course, she never questioned that if she felt a cat was unsafe, why not her daughter?)

The real revelation came when she started her own composting. Not only did the buried, information-seeking side of her relish in learning something new, but her compost pile was _magic_. Scraps, bits, worms, dead things – combine them correctly, and you created something that encouraged, aided, growth.

As Carol scrubs at Sophia's favorite purple t-shirt, bending in easy, inexplicable camaraderie with these other women, these shocked but bruiseless women, smiling cautiously at them, not sure of how to respond but absorbing their words, and possibly, their friendship, she thinks of her abandoned garden.

Pictures, clearly, the first tomato, gleaming scarlet on the vine.

Wonders if it would taste the way life does right now, a combination of the utterly expected and something new, richer, exotic and strange.


	2. Vapor

The first time he meets the brother he should have had, if life was fair and the world made sense and there was someone or something that really cared about him, he tries to kill him.

_Rick Grimes. _The words come out in a sneer, the vitriol and anger warring with the enormous lump in his throat when they tell him: Merle, the brother life actually gave him, is probably dead. Chained like an animal (_The animal he is…_something whispers, way back in Daryl's mind) to a rooftop. Left for geek food.

Daryl barely registers all of the blank, bovine faces, circling him, these "good people" he and his brother have fallen in with, out of necessity. Daryl stands in the loose circle of near-strangers and wants them to hurt the way he does.

Shane, who Daryl knows without really having to know him. Shane is Merle, with nicer teeth and a cop's badge who's shacking up with his dead best friend's wife, if you can believe anything he's saying. So, just as dangerous. No – more dangerous. Dale, the old guy who's always tinkering with his stupid RV, spoutin' off at the mouth like some school teacher and nosing around tryin' to get to how people are _feelin'. _The two blond sisters, standing to the side, holding onto each other. The younger one beautiful in a way that Daryl knows he never can deserve, and wouldn't even bother tryin'.

Then a new face: Rick Grimes. The supposedly dead sheriff. What a joke! But he sees something in this man, something missing from all of the men Daryl has known until now: compassion. Not just doin' something 'cause it's good for you, or for your own, but because it's _right._

"What I did, I didn't do on a whim. Your brother does not play or work well with others," Rick's calm, firm voice in his face. But somehow, it doesn't seem like an accusation. Or, at least…not an accusation that includes Daryl.

Most folks that see the tussle in the dust of the camp's yard probably think Daryl concedes because he is outnumbered, outmanned. But he does so because he's found a man worth conceding to, even if he doesn't really understand this yet.

ooooOOOOoooo

Daryl waits impatiently as they all take their sweet ol' time headin' out. He sits jittering his legs, the red and yellow tails of his arrows bouncing spasmodically as he cleans bits of squirrel guts from them.

He hears Rick and Shane down by the tents talking in voices that aren't meant to be overheard. But Shane is about as subtle as an elephant in a bikini, so the anger and frustration in his voice carries towards them.

One of the woman, the one with ugly hulk of a husband and the skinny blond daughter, is diligently ironing a stack of clothing, her shorn head tilted down. He stops fidgeting for a moment, notices that she's also listening to the two friends debate the value of risking lives to save his brother.

He's not quite sure of her name, and he's not quite sure why the hell she's ironin' clothes. She must not'a gotten the memo that the world had ended.

Rick appears at the top of the low slope next to her and Daryl sets aside his arrows. Shane is at his heels.

"…..save some douchebag like Merle Dixon!" Shane's hair in on end, his voice a rough bark in his friend's face.

Daryl's gut burns. "Might want to choose your words more carefully, there!"

"Oh, no, 'douchebag' is what I meant," Shane spits at him, rolling his eyes, turns back to Rick, whose eyes bounce back and forth between Daryl and his friend. "Merle Dixon, man. He wouldn't give you a glass of water if you was dyin' of thirst, that guy."

Daryl says nothing, and not just because the sentiment wasn't directed at him. It's hard to respond to such a blunt truth.

"Doesn't matter what he would do," Rick responds, "It matters what_ I_ would do…" Daryl doesn't hear all of the rest of it. It's good to know he doesn't have to go back and try to find his brother alone in the seething tomb that Atlanta is now, though he knows he'd do it, alone, on foot, until they were worn to bloody stumps, if necessary.

But this guy. This cop. This _man_. Shit. Who knew there really are people that do stuff, just because it's the right thing?

Daryl stands up, squints, wraps his fear for Merle and his surliness around himself like a protective blanket. He notices the nearly-bald woman has stopped ironing. She is gazing at Rick with the saddest eyes Daryl has ever seen. She seems as sucker-punched by Rick's comment as he is. She catches Daryl's eye, and the smallest hint of a smile turns up one corner of her mouth. He nods at her, and she lowers her sad eyes, the smile dropping from her lips, blown away on the breeze.

She picks the iron back up, gets back to her pointless task. He notices her back is straighter, her shoulders squared.

The men head down the slope, towards the car, towards his brother. He suddenly remembers the woman's name: _Carol_.


	3. Oxygen

**"Composting organisms require four equally important things to work effectively. One of them is:**

**Oxygen — for oxidizing the carbon, the decomposition process."**

Sometimes, she just wants to breathe. Sometimes, it's just so goddamn hard.

It has all started well: the two blond sisters, Amy and Andrea, had stopped by the tent she shares with Ed and Sophia. Sophia was off, playing with the other kids, and Ed was sleeping off his usual a combination of booze and grand piss-off at the world. When she stood in the entryway of the tent, looking down at his sleep-puffed face, she can almost see the boy he was. She can almost love him, without the shame and self-recrimination that inevitably follow.

She's collecting up the soiled clothing littering their campsite, asking anyone who passes if they need washing done. The sisters show up with Jackie, whom Carol likes. Jackie is no-nonsense in a way Carol can never hope to be, but she has an inner calm, a soulfulness, and confidence that is less obvious than the other women, these beautiful, educated women whose lives, until this point, could not have been less like hers.

They expect things to get better. But more, oh, much more: _they expect that they, themselves, can make things better. _She cannot remember the last time she expected better. She has never thought it was something she could author.

She walks to the water with the small group, cautiously happy to be communing with them. Her life, for so long, has been bereft of adult female companionship, excepting the occasional phone call from her distant, disappointed mother.

They are all scrubbing in companionable silence, as Carl and Shane splash across the way. Carol keeps looking up at them, smiling a little, wondering if it would have been easier if she'd had a boy. The thought feels like a betrayal. More so when realizes he likely would have been like Ed.

Ed. Who shows up about twenty minutes after they arrive, to smoke, and brood, and crush the air out of Carol's lungs. She can feel the weight of him, at her back. On her back.

"I am beginning to question the division of labor here," Jackie mutters, breaking the silence, which is now taut with Ed's presence, as Shane and Carl shout about frogs. Amy and Andrea laugh and roll their eyes in agreement. Carol is surprised. They are doing women's work. Useful work. Clean clothes, they keep you feeling human, they separate you from the shambling, bloody, walking dead.

"It's just the way it is," she says, going back to her washboard. She feels the sisters exchange a glance with Jackie over her head. They don't understand.

A few moments of silence.

Then they begin to talk about what they miss. Amy, her electronics, Jackie, her gourmet coffee. Andrea leans back, blows a puff of blond hair from her face. Her icy blue eyes gleam, and she sneaks a look back at Ed. Leans in towards the rest of the women.

"I miss my vibrator," she deadpans, and her sister and Jackie start giggling uncontrollably.

Carol's heart seizes. Does she take this chance? She looks around as well, mutters more to the washboard than the women, "Me too." Andrea gasps, smiles, and gives Carol and appraising glance. Seems to see her for the first time as someone who exists not only to be pitied. Their laughter buoys Carol's tired heart.

And then. _Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no_…

Ed is there. "What's the laughin' about? This ain't no comedy club," he barks, getting into Andrea's face. Andrea, who is standing between Carol and her husband, her broken, wrathful god. "Don't think I won't slap you, just 'cause you some college-educated cooze," Ed bellows at the blond woman.

Carol's stomach is tight with the shame of it. Ed could not have embarrassed her more if he wandered up to them stark naked with a raging boner. This was a _family matter_. This was _private. _

And then they are all yelling, Ed warning her she'll pay for it later, Andrea and Amy holding lightly but firmly onto her arm, telling him she doesn't have to go with him, and they know, they've seen the bruises, they are warning Ed, and Carol can only whimper, because she just cannot _breathe…_

Then Shane is there, felling Ed, like a lion with a black mane taking down a rhino. The other women hold her back, and for a moment, Carol thinks it's going to be okay. Ed, like all other bullies, is willing to show his neck to a stronger foe. Shane pushes him to the ground, sending up swirls of dust, hits him once, twice. Mutters something to him, about hitting women, hitting his wife, his daughter…

But he _doesn't stop. _

And Carol sees: neither man is better than the other. They are two animals, raging in the dirt, one stronger, but both very, very dangerous. Ed dangerous by nature, and Shane dangerous by circumstance. Both men unable to control their desire to control what they do not like about the world by beating it into submission.

The left side of Ed's face is becoming pulpy and blood gleams scarlet on Shane's fist as he raises and lowers it, like a piston, again and again. Unflagging.

And someone is shrieking, and she collapses into the dust around her fallen god, choking on the shame, and the dirt, and the blood and the fear, and she doesn't realize that it is her who is shrieking, that those are her howls filling the air, because Carol can barely gasp for breath.

She can hardly breathe.


	4. Humus

**"In soil science, 'humus' refers to any organic matter that has reached a point of stasis, where it will break down no further and might, if conditions do not change, remain as it is for centuries, if not millennia."**

Someone is screaming, the word "NO", over and over and over again. He wishes the person would just shut the hell up, already. Ain't the _time _or _place_ to be wailin' like a fool. It's a good way to get killed, actually.

Then, as he stares into the infinite, shiny, bloody circle that was Merle's supposed death trap, He realizes the fool is him. He wipes his face, ignoring the other men who share the barren rooftop with him, ignoring their horrified looks of disgust and dismay and something else he doesn't care to see – compassion, pity. Especially outta that sheriff's eyes.

He calms himself with one last, shaky exhalation. Walks over to what now remains of his brother's presence on the roof: his hand. Fingers curled, beckoning Daryl towards it. He refuses to think what it might mean, and he allows an odd calm to fall over him. Merle is indestructible. Merle is god. _Only Merle can kill Merle_, he thinks, and the calm spreads. He takes one last swipe at his eyes, pulls out a paisley bandana, lays it carefully on the sun-heated surface of the roof.

Lifts the hand, Merle's hand. And, gently as a father tucking his child into bed, he wraps the hand up, and brings it silently over to the Asian kid, who looks nervously, defiantly at him, but says nothing as he tucks it into his backpack. _Damn straight, _he thinks, relieved that no one asks him what he's planning on doing with the damned thing, because he cannot possibly face the idea of burying his brother, or even this piece of him, like some shattered fragment of an ancient idol, in the unforgiving ground.

oooOOOooo

They return to a bloodbath.

The dead, they invade, and swarm, and feed, cutting a haphazard path of destruction through the camp, felling the young, the old, the weak, and the strong. The dead don't care. Daryl fights alongside them all, pushing thoughts of Merle from his mind. Pushing thoughts of those toughs, the Vatos, protecting all of those geezers, trapped like animals in an abandoned zoo, out of a sense of doing what was right.

Daryl knows Merle wouldn't even consider it. He wonders…would he?

He pushes the though away. Fells another geek. Wipes drops of sweat – or are they tears? – out of his eyes. Loads another arrow.

Tries to think of nothing. Nothing but staying alive.

oooOOOooo

The sun rises, milky and weak, on a graveyard.

He lines up the dead in neat rows with a few of the other men, to complete the final task. The one they've determined is necessary. He's not used to smashing skulls in, the sound it makes, the crunch and the wetness, but he knows, all too soon, he will be.

He looks over by the RV, where Andrea strokes the face Amy's beautiful, alabaster corpse. He tries not to think about the young woman alive, but in terms of survival: her sister better watch out, or someone watch out for her. She could come back at any time. And she will have lost all of her beauty. He hopes he's not the one to end her permanently, though.

Glenn's wavering voice catches his attention.

"No, no, no, what are you doing?" Hysteria nips like an angry dog at the edge of his words. He's gesturing wildly at the guys stacking corpses. "Those are _our_ people! We don't burn _our _people! We bury them!" The guy stands his ground, and they place the body gently on the ground, away from the geeks about to be burned.

Daryl turns back to his job, working his way methodically down the line, trying not to think of the people that were alive mere hours ago. Trying to convince himself, he's doing them a favor. He gets to the last corpse in the row.

It's that big, ugly guy. Ed. Looks like the walkers got him good. He raises the pickax. This one won't be so hard.

"I'll do it," a voice at his elbow. Almost makes him drop the damned thing. "He's my husband." A fact and an accusation.

She's as pale and worn as the day is. Tear tracks have dried grey on her face, falling from dull grayish-blue eyes. There is a small, dark bruise in the corner of her mouth. He understands it's not from a walker. He hands her the weapon wordlessly.

She swings the ax downward with no skill, contacting with the blood-smeared skull. It's a solid strike, and it's enough. He instinctively holds his hand out, but she lifts it again.

Crashes it down again, vocalizing in a mewling sound that grabs him in the gut, twists hard. He folds his arms across his chest. Let's her hang on to the axe as long as she damn well pleases. He's not gonna take it from her.

Up and down, in a bloody arc. One, two, three, four, five times. She bends over finally, spent, sobbing. The man at her feet is unrecognizable as human.

She hands the ax back to him, clutching one hand to her stomach as if she's going to be sick. She looks up at him, tears streaming down her red face, but he can see.

Those grey eyes, though they're bloodshot and puffy, those grey eyes: they are no longer dulled. They are clearing, and getting brighter.


	5. Anaerobic Conditions

**A/N: Thanks to my "regulars" and everyone else for deciding to take this very specific, angst-y, long trip with me. It's gonna be weird, no doubt. But hopefully, also interesting, moving and true to our favorite couple.**

**"Significant anaerobic conditions existing in a composting system is usually a symptom that some important management factor has been ****_neglected or misunderstood_****."**

That crazy-ass doctor is still jabbering away to the rest of 'em, but Daryl's heard just about enough. Worse, he's seen the guy's face, when they were all watchin' that video with the network of lights that he said was some poor fool's brain: that look of just givin' up. Jenner's had it, which, well, good for him. Daryl isn't quite done with life yet. Even though it's not lookin' too promising, he still wants the choice to be his as to exactly when and where he hangs up his jock strap.

Though most of him knows it's utterly pointless, he takes up an axe again, starts waling on the unyielding metal doors, wincing as sparks fly up. He's pissed to have the control so flagrantly removed from his life. He thinks of the mothers, Carol and Lori, huddled by the abandoned work stations, hugging their children close.

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this," her voice hangs in the hot, dying air, thick with tears.

He slams the axe down again, thinking of Merle. A glimmer of hope in his heart, that his brother is still alive out there, somewhere, in this abandoned, dirty attic of a world. He thinks of their plan to rip off the entire camp mere days ago. He realizes now how small that idea was, how pointless.

There's only one thing worth value anymore, and that's _life. _Anything else you want, it's out there, waiting to be picked up or looted or hoarded. There's no need takin' stuff from other people. The world's full of a lot more stuff than people now. He's starting to understand what that means, just a little. He can't get those kids' terrified faces out his mind. He can't still his own hammering heart.

_But suddenly_. The door he's been pounding uselessly at flies open. He staggers back, uncomprehending. Then they are all shouting, running, towards the front.

"Topside is locked down!" Jenner's warning darts after them. Daryl doesn't care. He'll figure it out when they get up there. His heart is still pounding, his lungs still expanding, his head still throbbing with the remnants of his hangover, and that's all there is, all that counts right now. He's still alive, this minute.

Some opt not to come. Jackie, Andrea. The old guy, Dale, stays behind as well. _Their choice_, he thinks. If that's how they wanna play it, it's their call.

They are faced with an unyielding wall of glass, the wasted world, and life within it, on the other side, tantalizingly near but inexorably out of reach. Daryl, T-Dog, Shane, and even Rick, rage against it with everything they have: axes, guns, and when the frustration gets the best of them, fists.

Daryl's raging, pounding heart doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to give up the fight, but he looks around and it seems that this might be the end. Wasted but viable world 6 inches of glass away, he's gonna die in this sterile, pristine tomb.

And then. _No shit._ He can hardly believe it.

Carol dashes over to Rick, fumbling with her tote. "I might have something that can help!" She calls out. What the hell? What could she possibly have? A goddamn nail file? "I found it, the other day, when I washed your uniform!" She pulls her hand out of the bag.

And there it is: salvation. Gleaming dull green like a ripe avocado, like the last Easter egg found in the hunt. An honest-to-goodness grenade, sitting in the middle of her palm. The joyful disbelief on Rick's face is echoed in Daryl's heart.

The glass explodes outward and they scramble for the relative safety of the vehicles. Daryl's mind is spinning. He sees Andrea's blond head and Dale's hat crest over the razor-sharp teeth of broken glass rimming the window with moments to spare.

And then the air is sucked from the world for a moment as the CDC collapses in a glorious, glowing fireball. His ears are ringing as they all load up, he riding alone in the pickup, Merle's bike secured in the back. He glances back, briefly, at the station wagon carrying the Grimes family, Carol and Sophia. He looks at her for a few moments. Her nondescript face and clothes, those gleaming grey-blue eyes. She clasps her daughter close to her side. Nothing about her reveals that she just saved all of their asses.

He shakes his head, starts the truck. Falls into line with the rest of the small caravan of weary survivors. Remembers his scorn a few days earlier, watching her iron. Remembers yesterday morning, as she sunk his axe, again and again, into her dead husband's head.

He follows these people, this band of ragged humanity, and though he's riding alone, he suddenly feels as if he might just belong somewhere.


	6. Earthworms

The tarmac is as hot and unforgiving as the Georgia sun, riding high like a burnished coin in the sky above them, out of sight. Carol is only vaguely aware of the small bits of rock and glass cutting into her hands and stomach, of Lori's slender arm locking her in place, her hand covering the cries that are desperate to escape her lips, though she squirms mindlessly against her friend's grasp.

Her entire consciousness is honed in on her daughter: crouching under the next car, twenty feet and light years away from her reaching hand. She looks so small, so young, so helpless, so fearful. Carol's heart is a wild bird in a cage, wanting only flight, towards her child.

But then, the herd of the dead lessens, tapers off. The hot highway and abandoned cars no longer crawl with them. The swarm has passed. Her heart lifts, and she feels Lori, the other mother of the group, stirring next to her. They must gather their young to them.

Hope arrives prematurely.

Even when she goes back to that moment, that fateful moment, and runs through it all in her mind, (which she does, again and again and again, like a prayer that never gets answered) Carol is never entirely sure exactly how it happens.

It's a messy blur of the scraping drag of a walker's feet, a growl, a grab, a squeal, and then Sophia, her beautiful perfect girl, dashing off into the woods, doll in hand and blue tee-shirt disappearing into the deep brown and green. Thin, freckled, living legs pumping up and down. The last she ever sees of her sweet girl, really, though she doesn't know it yet.

And then they are all around her, Lori supporting her so she doesn't collapse to the highway's unforgiving surface, the others, looks of fear and dismay clearly etched on the planes of their faces, Rick hoping over the railing and dashing in after her daughter. She is still fearful, but now she knows: Rick was able to find the group, be reunited with Lori and Carl, because he is worthy, because he is a man of honor, because God has seen that he does the right thing, for the right reasons.

She, Carol, who is riddled with sin and hate and shame and petty vengeance, she cannot hope to bring her daughter back to herself. She who wished her husband struck down, because of the pain he doled out, and because of something more sinister, warped, in his eyes when he looked at his offspring and her blossoming figure. Carol kept her daughter in dolls and rainbows because of those looks. She didn't want to face what they meant, or the trap she had set for herself and Sophia.

And she just stands there, rooted to the seam in the ground where the highway ends and the grass begins. Waiting for her savior, for her daughter's savior, to return, with his bounty in hand.

But when he returns…he returns empty-handed. He goes back in, with Daryl, whose eyes are disarmingly soft inside his dirt-smeared, tightly buttoned-up face. She thinks of him, briefly, standing to the side as she destroyed Ed's skull. No words, arms folded. Eyes so very soft.

She waits, and waits some more. She wishes she didn't understand, but she's beginning to. She stands silent sentinel, staring unseeing into the woods, her insides clenched and ready for the biggest blow, the ultimate sacrifice: her daughter's life. She knows it's at least as much as she deserves.

oooOOOooo

They don't give her a weapon, and she doesn't ask for one. But she is in the woods with them. She needs to be here. Her reason for breathing, for going on, for taking another step forward, is, God willing, here somewhere, cowering, terrified behind the next tree or squatting alongside the creek, drinking the cold water that could easily giver her stomach cramps. _But alive, please, Lord,_ she prays feverishly, wondering for the first time if anyone or anything is listening.

And then, church bells, pealing out, calling them. Calling her. Her daughter isn't there, or other people. Or salvation. And Carol is beginning to understand. She sits in the front pew, ignoring the rest of them, staring up into Jesus' wooden, worn, face, his cheeks carved in misery. Staring down at her. She admits out loud her deepest sins: her wish that somehow, this apocalypse would be Ed's downfall, her coward's way out.

She hadn't counted on Sophia being collateral damage. "Please don't punish her," she pleads. She's on her feet. She feels the rest of them, their presence, Lori right behind her, Rick to her right, Daryl hovering at the doorway. "She's still a little girl, in her way." She can no longer stand, and collapses back against Lori, this woman that could be her friend.

She follows the others back outside, into the woods, feeling the Savior's eyes boring into her, from above. His face, so sad and serene, unbothered by their very human fear and anguish.

oooOOOOooo

"This is the whole plan, then?"

She hates the puling whine in her voice, but frustration hides her fear, pushes it back. She collapses on a log as the rest of them - Lori, Andrea, Glenn and Daryl - form a loose circle around her.

Andrea, whose face is a mask of bitterness and resentment. She mutters something about waving their sticks and wandering the woods.

"I see _you_ have a gun," Andrea sneers at Lori, her eyes like ice chips.

Lori, who is squatting next to Carol, pulls it free from the waistband of her jeans, thrusts it towards the blond woman. "Here, take it," she spits. "I'm sick of the looks you're givin' me." Andrea looks surprised, shamed, but she takes the gun uncertainly.

Lori then turns her blazing gaze on Carol. "Honey..." she begins, carefully, but there is steel in her voice. "I cannot image what you're going through. But you gotta stop blamin' Rick. It's all over your face every time you look at him. He did not hesitate at all when she took off into the woods. I can't say any of us would have done the same." Her words are as bad, no, worse, than Ed's fists ever were. They shame her in a way that he never could, because, in the furthest recesses of her mind, Carol knows that she never did deserve what Ed doled out. But she deserves this.

Lori is still talking. "Anybody? If you think you can do this without him, go ahead, nobody's stopping you," she's including everyone in the little circle as she chastises, and Carol is relieved that she can share the shame, at least. Lori looks away, swigs some water, after her vehement defense of her husband.

There is a fierce love and respect for Rick in his wife's eyes. Carol says nothing, doesn't know what to offer. Thank goodness, Andrea does.

"Here," she proffers the handgun at Lori, who takes it. "We better keep movin'."

The group plods forward, until, moments later, a shot rings out, sends them running.


	7. Waste

**A/N: So….I am really really glad I put "eventual Caryl" in the description of this story, because it's gonna get there, but it might take some time. I have to be honest, I forgot how different both of these characters were before Sophia walked out the barn. Anywho, I am glad that for the most part, y'all seem to be enjoying the story thus far. I am trying to be as true to the characters, not only as to who they become, but who they were.**

**NB: I know I paraphrased the conversation between Andrea and Daryl about his experience in the woods. I am sure you all understand, and the gist of it is still there (along with my entirely fabricated intro). ;-) **

Some of them decide to stay. For Sophia, just in case. Just for the night, until they can figure out a solution. But for Daryl, there's only one answer, the one he spit in Carol and Andrea's startled faces earlier in the day: they are gonna locate this little girl, and she's gonna be just fine. These people, they all _talk _about everything too goddamn much. Doin' is the only thing that really matters. Words mean a whole lotta nothin', from where he's standin'.

It's just the four of them left on the clogged, lonely stretch of highway. Dale, keeping uneasy watch outside. He's glad he's not that dude, getting the evil eye from Andrea every other minute. He watches her in the dimness of the RV, fussing with the gun clip, thinks about how much she loves her sister: so much, she didn't want to live anymore. He knows that he's never loved anyone that much. Not his momma, dead from a careless cigarette before he was ten. Not his daddy, gone most of the time, smackin' him around when he was. And not Merle, even though, if pressed, Daryl would admit that he loves his brother more than he's loved anyone in his life. Though it's such a broken, uneasy love. And certainly not a love worth dyin' for.

He approaches the blond woman, Carol's incessant sobbing from the bunk behind him making his insides itch with frustration. He wants out of this tin can, and now. Her abject sorrow in the face of her daughter's disappearance tugs at his heart, moves him. No one ever loved the child he was that much. But her passivity throughout the past few days irritates him as well. He knows Carol's not the type to kill herself (putting aside all of the Jesus stuff); she'll keep going, no matter how they find her daughter, because she thinks she deserves what's been laid at her feet. Daryl's not sure about the answer to that yet, himself. In his mind, her desperate love for Sophia is marred by the fact that she lived with that brute of a husband, and let her daughter live with him, for far too long.

Mothers ought to protect their kids best they can. Not keepin' 'em in dangerous situations. Not dyin' on them from shear laziness or stupidity.

He sighs roughly, looks down at Andrea. Her blue eyes glisten in the low light. "Headin' out to search a bit. Wanna come?" He coughs out.

She sizes him up. "Yeah, let's go." She glances over at Carol's curled form momentarily, and they head out. Daryl ignores Dale's hang-wringing and the glimmer of hope glowing in Carol's eyes.

Something loosens in his chest once they are out of sight of both of the others. He doesn't do recrimination or guilt very well. Walking with Andrea is uncomplicated. He needs that right now. They walk about a half mile or so in silence, the only light coming from the moon, glancing off her pale eyes and hair. She's not totally comfortable with the gun, he sees. He understands why Dale is hesitant to give hers back to her, for a few reasons.

"See anything you like?" She finally pipes up. _Damn. _Guess he had been starin' a little. Just not for the reasons she thinks.

But, well, since she's asked, he takes a longer, sidelong look. She's good-lookin', for sure, not in that soft, easy way her sister was, but he pictures her decked out in her fancy lawyer gear, heels, tight business suit, and yeah. She probably didn't look half bad. Better than that.

"Maybe," he says to his feet.

"Wow, there's a rousing endorsement," she chuckles a little. "You really know how to make a gal feel special. Probably a real ladies' man, right?" Her perfect, white teeth gleam, her smile not entirely kind. She's someone who doesn't let go of anger quickly.

His sexual experience is something he really doesn't want to discuss with this woman, with her hard voice thinly veiled with humor. He does take a passing glance at her tits, though. Pretty top-notch.

She seems to realize she'll get nowhere with him with this tack, changes the subject. Her face clouds with genuine concern when she begins speaking again.

"Three nights in these woods," she says, glancing over at him. "Sophia must be terrified."

He thinks a moment, looks over at her. Easier to talk about this than flirt, that's for sure. "Nah, she could still be okay. I was lost for 9 days myself. No one even noticed I was gone. Merle was doin' another stint in Juvie, dad was off on a bender with some waitress," he pauses, remembering. Cheryl. That was the waitress' name. She has shocking, dyed orange hair and smelled like Juicy Fruit and stale pancakes. She'd hug Daryl sometimes, when she saw him, press his face into her horrifying enormous bosom. She'd cackle, tell him his face was as red as her hair. He smiles a little. "Only problem, was the itchy ass from wipin' it with poison oak."

Andrea's mouth falls open, then she starts laughing. "I'm sorry...I don't mean to laugh...that sounds terrible." She arranges her face back into a look of concern, but her mouth is bending back into a smile.

He can't help but smile back.

oooOOOooo

"Got bit

Fever hit

World gone to shit

Might as well quit."

He reads the poem as the walker, who apparently was the dumbest person on the planet prior to hanging himself, thrashes above him, his wasted lower legs flopping uselessly.

Andrea gazes up at him, her mouth a "U" of disgust. She leans aside, pukes delicately.

"That's payback for laughing about my itchy ass," he aims at her, stopping short of actually laughing at her. She shoots daggers at him, stumbles over to look more closely at the dangling zombie.

"Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot hisself in the head," Daryl scoffs, turns to walk away.

"You're just going to leave him like that?"

"Why not? He's not hurtin' anybody up there," he gestures. "Why waste an arrow?"

She turns back, her body rigid, staring up the dangling husk of a fool.

He asks her while her backs turned: "Do you wanna live now, or not?"

She spins around, defiantly: "Answer for an arrow?"

He considers, wonders if maybe she'll say something meaningful. Something worth an arrow. "Fair".

"I don't know if I wanna live, or if I have to, or if it's just a habit," for the first time all night, she looks unsure.

"Not much of an answer," he responds, but a deal is a deal. He puts the dangling idiot out of his misery. "Waste of an arrow."

They turn to walk back, and Daryl thinks again what a waste words are most of the time. No amount of hopin', or prayin' or talkin' is going to bring Sophia back. But he can, and he will, bring that little girl back to her mother. And Carol might have the chance she's not sure she deserves. The chance Daryl never got.


	8. Night, an Interlude

**A/N: Thanks again, new readers and old, for reviewing and engaging with me and this story. It's what makes it fun. ~CeeCee**

She hears someone come into the stuffy RV and sits up. She realizes that the air in the RV might not be what's stifling her: her face and nose are a puffed mess from crying. She just cannot seem to stop this endless flow of tears. The more she weeps, the more a sense of aimless lethargy entrenches itself in her body and soul. She seems to have entered a state of stasis, with the others orbiting cautiously around her. Her gravity is pulling them down, she knows. Drowning them in her fear and sorrow.

Daryl's scruffy outline stands by the door, limned in moonlight. She sits up, stares at his lone figure, leaning against the door.

She stands up, drags herself slowly over towards him. She notices, with a glimmer of curiosity, he's eavesdropping on Dale and Andrea outside. She didn't peg him as the type. He looks at her in the dimness of the trailer, raises his eyebrows. Shifts silently against the wall. She steps closer, irresistibly drawn to this momentary distraction from her grief.

Their voices float through the open window, Dale's pleading, Andrea's harsh:

"Andrea wait," Dale's voice almost begs. "I thought about it and…well this is yours." He's giving her father's gun back to her. Carol remembers him, less than an hour ago, trying to hand one over to her. Everything in her recoiled at the thought of arming herself. Andrea does not seem to have any compunction on the subject. "Please…please don't make me regret this."

A moment, where the only sound is her own shallow breathing in her ears and the chunk of the gun falling into Andrea's hand. "I'll take watch," Andrea's voice is a harsh whisper.

"Are you ever going to forgive me?" Dale's voice is desperately sad, and Carol feels for him, remembering Andrea's earlier accusation: he thwarted her suicide with his own potential murder. Made her responsible not only for her own life, but his. She seems to resent the culpability, so she's thrusting it back onto him.

"I'm trying to," comes Andrea's response.

Daryl makes a small noise at this, mutters something under his breath. Sounds like, "Not much of an answer."

Carol turns towards him, anticipating Dale's entrance momentarily. "What do you mean?" She's looking at him, notices his eyes cast towards the floor, tightness in his mouth.

He glances up at her, shakes his head. "That's one broad who doesn't have a clue what the hell she wants."

"Her sister is dead," Carol responds, immediately regrets it. She can't seem to get anything right in the past few days.

"And so's my _brother_," Daryl snarls, and Carol sees his foot jittering, his arms cross his chest.

"I'm sorry," the tears are coming again. She can't seem to help it. But _does_ know she shouldn't value the life and death of a sweet, vivacious co-ed over a clap-prone racist redneck, and she tries to convey that to the surly man who's spent countless hours looking for Sophia. It's not only disrespectful, it's blasphemous.

Daryl glances up again, and something loosens a little in his stance. His eyes, in his dirt-smudged face, are so soft. It's impossible for her not to notice. "Yeah, alright," he clears his throat. "I gotta get some shuteye, if we're gonna go back out there tomorrow and search for your little girl, see what the hell is going on with Carl and these farmers."

"Of course," she shakes her head and a few tears fly into the air. She almost reaches out to touch his arm, to say good night, something, but in the end, she turns away, climbs back into the cramped bunk in the back of the RV.

He settles back on the floor, tucking a pillow under his head. Dale still hasn't come back in, and she wonders if he's still just standing at the door, wanting to go to Andrea on the roof, but unable or unwilling to stir up their uneasy truce. The four of them, close in proximity, but utterly alone. She hugs her pillow tightly, trying to ignore the roaring emptiness inside of her. Something startles her from it.

"Carol?" His voice is rusty with exhaustion and hesitance.

"Yes?" She pushes herself slightly. Sees his supine form, his arms folded in a bow under his head, eyes staring up at the corrugated metal roof.

"Your girl…" he trails off. "Sophia. She's not gonna end up like Amy, or Merle. We're going to find her. And she's gonna be alive. Get some sleep."

She waits for him to say something else, but realizes he's drifted off when his muffled snores fill the small space. She doesn't know if she believes him, but when she nestles back down, the emptiness in her heart is more manageable.


	9. Nitrogen

**A/N: At the behest of my Ideal Reader of Caryl FF, ImOrca, I've edited the final two sections of this chapter to make them better and truer to the characters****. ~CeeCee**

**"Composting organisms require four equally important things to work effectively. The second one is:**

**Nitrogen — to grow and reproduce more organisms to oxidize the carbon.**

**High nitrogen materials tend to be green or colorful." **

The abandoned house he finds in the small clearing is a brittle gray eggshell containing tiny droppings, signs of life. He finds a discarded but not-yet-spoiled tin of mostly-eaten sardines floating on the top of the garbage can in the dusty but tidy kitchen. His heart quickens. Despite his words to Carol last night before he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, he wonders if he's been on a fool's errand, if finding her little girl alive is even a remote possibility.

He thinks about the story he told Andrea, the child he had been getting lost in the woods, both of them chuckling over his itchy ass. But what bravado and humor, even twenty-five years later, fail to erase from his memory were those long, cold nights, alone, where ever snap of a twig or mournful hooting of an owl set his little boy's heart pounding. What kept him going was the fact that he knew not another living soul was looking for him. And he doubted anyone would miss him, were he never to return.

Sophia's life up until now probably hasn't been totally rosy, he thinks, as he moves towards a large cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, but she has something Daryl never did: the unquestionable, undeniable love of her mother. The girl knows her mother would never abandon her, and this knowledge may have made her soft. The boy Daryl had been was mostly sharp edges, carved from necessity. And survival.

Heart pounding, he throws open the cupboard door and his heart leaps up, flutters in his throat. _Calm the fuck down,_ he warns himself, not daring to hope as he looks down at the cozy nest of blankets and pillows on the floor. Now to find the little chick this nest belongs to. And bring her home. He dashes outside, his voice rusty with disuse, calling her name.

oooOOOooo

She won't be useless anymore. She's sickening of her own tears, and of the pity and reassurances from everyone else. At the highway, no Sophia in sight. She tells Andrea and Shane she didn't need to hear it anymore, the consolations about praying and hoping. As soon as they return to the farm, the two drift away from her, their thoughts and eyes on each other, on guns, the air around them thick with their combined resentment of others in the group and unspoken sexual tension. Carol wants none of it.

She walks ploddingly back to the RV, and opens the door. The musty smell hits her immediately. She looks around with fresh eyes: while the place isn't exactly a disaster, it is clearly showing signs that no fewer than three tired, dirty people, at any given time, have bunked down here for the past few weeks. And if Carol knows how to do anything, it's keep house. A sense of calm, like a warm cloak, falls over her as she moves purposefully towards the bedroom.

"Work in one direction," she murmurs to herself, stripping the bed. A memory threatens to sucker punch her:

_"Work in one direction," she says to Sophia, who is starting to be a good little helper around their tiny house. "Back to front." Carol smiles at her, handing her a bucket filled with sudsy water and a scrub brush. _ "_Stay out of Daddy's den, but make sure you get everything else. Start in your room and work your way towards the front of the house._ _Then you won't get stuck tryin' to step over a clean spot. Got me?" _

_"Yes, Mommy," Sophia replies, taking the supplies, and she can't help but think she's a little too old to still be calling her mother that. _Better to keep her young,_ a warning voice in the back of Carol's head whispers. _You see how Ed's eyein' her._ The voice sounds just like her own mother: bored and uninterested, but judgmental. But today is a beautiful spring day, and Ed is gone hunting for the whole weekend, and it's just she and Sophia. She doesn't admit on the surface how happy that makes her, how content. But her step is lighter. _

_They work hard for most of the morning, cleaning the small dingy house as best as they can. They sit down around noon for soup and sandwiches, and Sophia asks if she can put on the radio. Carol nods. A silly, catchy pop song comes on and Sophia starts belting the words with lusty enjoyment between slurps of chicken noodle. _

_"How do you know this song?" Carol asks, amused. _

_Sophia shrugs, an adolescent gesture. "School. It's Terri's favorite song. It's _everyone's_ favorite song." She rolls her eyes a little, takes a small bite of her sandwich, continues humming under her breath. _

_"Teach me," Carol blurts out, surprising herself. "Teach me the words." _

_Sophia looks startled, glances around. Even when he is not here, Ed's presence is overwhelming. "Ok. There's a dance too, that goes with it," she jumps up, her lunch forgot, and starts moving with a heart-breaking combination of youthful grace and gangliness that Carol's heart squeezes in her chest. _

_"C'mon, Mommy, the song's almost over!" _

_She jumps up, and as the radio moves from one pop tune to another, and mother and daughter dance the rest of the afternoon away, without fear of interruption, or worse. _

Now, leaving the neatened bunk space and heading towards the kitchenette, Carol doesn't let the tears pouring down her face stop her. She wants more days like that with her daughter, and finally, she feels like that just might be possible, if she keeps working in one direction.

oooOOOooo

There's the sound of air being displaced as the RV's door pushes open. She looks up, expecting Dale, or maybe Andrea or Lori. But it's Daryl, several days' worth of dirt stuck to his bare arms. He looks confused, his eyes bouncing distractedly from the clean dishes sitting on the sideboard to the piles of sewing in her lap.

"I wanted it to be nice for her," she says, to say something to this dirty, strange, sweet man-boy standing in front of her. She looks back down at her sewing, picks up the needle, sets back to work. The texture of the fabric in her hand makes her feel safe. She feels him standing there for a moment or two, is startled when a muted thunk interrupts the silence.

He's got this ridiculously beautiful flower stuck in a beer bottle. He's set it on the worn linoleum table. She just stares at it. It seems almost unreal, here in this shabby trailer. Here, when her daughter isn't. Here, in this world full of the rambling dead. "A flower," it's almost a question, and she feels foolish.

"It's a Cherokee Rose," he says, finally. He looks at her, folds his arms across his chest. She waits for more, because she feels there _is _more. He begins to tell her, about the Trail of Tears, his voice quiet and firm: "The American soldiers, they started pushin' the Indians further and further west," he glances at her, and her sewing falls to her lap, forgotten. "Lots of the kids, they died, exposure, sickness, starvation. Some just completely disappeared. So, the elders of the tribe, they meet one night, and pray to the spirits, for a sign, for something to soothe the hearts of all their grieving mothers," he pauses for a moment, but she doesn't think it's because he's finished. It's a storyteller's pause, a pause for her, the listener, and for him, to gather his words together, so he tells it right, like the person who told _him _this story.

"The next morning, all of these white flowers start blooming along the trail, one for each of the missing children," his voice is soft but sure. She thinks he's finished, but he looks over at her, at the flower. She brushes tears she didn't know were on her cheeks away. "Now, I'm not foolish enough to think there's a flower bloomin' for my brother out there. But I think this one's bloomin' for your little girl."

Something warm, and confusing, and utterly new is blooming in her stomach. She picks up her sewing again, and searches for the right thing to say. Nothing quite fits; he seems to have taken all of the right words for himself, leaving her speechless. She smiles up at him, trying to convey this.

He takes another glance around the cleaned RV. "She's gonna love it," he nearly stumbles out, shuts the door gently behind him.


	10. Manure

**A/N: Sorry for break in updating, everyone. Busy IRL weekend, and my muse got sidelined. Also: I've rewritten the last segment of Chapter 9 after reading some spot-on insight from my Ideal Reader, ImOrca. You certainly don't HAVE to go back and reread it, but I wanted to let you about the change in case any of you wanted to. ~ CeeCee**

"Manure is important in a rapid composting method that requires a high-nitrogen, high-bacteria heat-up material."

He tries to figure out which way is up. Or down. He'll settle for either. Everything is too bright, too warm and it doesn't help he's got Merle rasping endlessly in his ear…

_"You're like the shit they gonna scrape off'n the bottom of their boots, little brother…you ain't nothin' but redneck trash," he cackles, fades away, begins gnawing on Daryl's pants' leg. Which makes no sense at all, really. How can he be at his feet and in his ears? Or is it his head?_

His head is one pulsing mass of glue, bisected by the occasional slivers of broken glass shoved in for good measure. The sun has never been this bright, has it? He staggers, the hole in his left side screaming at him in his mother's voice, which he'd forgotten he remembered. This field is clearly at least one thousand miles long. There are several figures at least eight feet tall running towards him, the voices booming into his bloated brain. Another voice briefly overrides them…

_"Ain't no one else ever gonna love you but me, little brother. I brought you up, din't I? I showed you how to be a man, least I tried, Darylena. And you repay me by runnin' off with your li'l sheriff buddy, what left me hogtied on the roof to rot or become walker food!" Merle shoves him hard, and his entire left arm is singing in harmony with his burning side. Why won't these mother*ckers just leave him the hell alone? _

Though the pain is roaring through him, he now sees the group of giants approaching him across the field is actually Rick, Shane, T-Dog and Dale. Huh. He's not sure what's scarier.

"I was jokin' about shootin' me," he chokes out, his tongue slick with blood, a moment of clarity bursting through the soupy, pain-filled haze he's swimming in. The blood tastes odd and he flashes on a gutted, tiny animal. Squirrel? Maybe. That's what he's got 'round his neck? Somethin's hangin' there. He looks down._ Ears_. Right. They make him feel better. He dispatched those dead bastards, treated himself to a little squirrel. Damn straight.

And now these fools are slingin' him over their shoulders, and Andrea's running forward, her blond hair flying. She's got this ridiculous hat on and she's gabbling some nonsense about shooting him. He's clawing desperately at consciousness, if not sense, but he's losing. The last thing he's dimly, distantly aware of is Rick ripping his necklace of trophies from him.

_See? I'm right, bro. These people, they just take and take…Merle follows him down into darkness. It's better than being alone. _

oooOOOooo

He wakes up confused, but only because it's been months since he's slept in a real bed. And he's never slept in a bed as nice as the one he's in now. He takes quick stock of his body before attempting to sit up. The screaming puncture hole in his side has receded to a dull, warm throb clinging to his torso. He touches his bandaged head, winces.

He vaguely remembers Hershel's face, surrounded by pure white hair, hovering sternly, calmly over him, cleaning the wounds carefully. He also remembers the old geezer made no mention of the network of old scars crisscrossing Daryl's back. Living with them for so long, you think he'd forget about them. He never does. He can always feel them there, something he has to carry around with him until the day he dies.

The low light filtering through the lacey curtains and the enticing smells wafting up from the kitchen remind him he's had nothing but raw squirrel for over twenty-four hours. His clamoring stomach is now louder than any of his wounds, and he tries to prop himself up, motivated by the aroma of real food. His vision softly explode in slow bursts of yellow and white, clouding his vision. He flops back on to the pillow, hugs it, pissed at the limitations of his own body.

_Pussy, _Merle whispers in his ear. _Sissy. Little Darylena, layin' like a fresh little pansy in his pretty little bed. _

_Go away, _he's clear enough now to not respond out loud.

But Merle's right: he is all of those things. Both Merles, the real one and the one in his head, got it straight. He's not got a clue how to be a man. He thinks of Hershel, stayin' mum on the remnants of the lashins' his daddy gave him throughout his childhood. They are something he keeps hidden away at all costs, when he's able and thinking. Now he just pulls the clean sheet around his shoulders, like a cocoon.

oooOOOooo

_The dingy honky-tonk is nearly empty at 1:30, the music over, the dancers gone. A few stragglers hang on, to have that last drink to send them over the edge into sweet oblivion, or to find another human being to approximate the same. Daryl doesn't give a shit. He's waiting for Merle, like usual, to get back from one of his runs. Daryl doesn't know if he's buyin', or sellin', he just knows it's about meth. _

_He knocks back a shot of cheap whisky, gestures for another. The bartender complies. Daryl gazes blearily at the dude next to him, a grizzled guy with a trucker's cap on, his face nearly on the bar top. Blitzed. Suddenly there's a small, warm hand on his back. He spins around, reaching for his knife. _

_"Whoa, cowboy, just sayin' hi," her hair is dark red, messy. Her eyes rimmed with kohl liner. Appealing in her tight tee shirt and jeans in the way certain women are after midnight. _

_"Sorry," he mutters, turns back to his drink. _

_"A man like you shouldn't drink alone," she continues, hops up onto the stool next to him. He considers her for a moment, looks at how her shirt hugs her breasts, her small waist. Looking doesn't cost anything. Looking isn't complicated. He nods at the bartender again, points at his drink, makes a "v" with his fingers. The guy sets the two shots in front of them. _

_"Hey, thanks," she takes a small sip which she probably thinks makes her look ladylike. He thinks she should just stick to what she apparently knows. _

_"Don't say much, do ya?" After the first polite sip, she throws the rest of the whisky down her throat. He shrugs. She leans in towards him, and he can smell her, stale booze and something muskier, overly-sweet. It's not entirely unpleasant, and his body responds. She smiles knowingly, leans closer, her hot breath on his cheek. "Let's see what else that mouth is good for," and she reaches for his face, sliding her other hand up under his shirt. Her face is confused and he jumps up and away from her, feeling very sober suddenly. _

_"What the hell is going on under there…?" She trails off, shakes her head, looks at her hand which felt the raised snarls and striations on his back, wanders away. And he breathes a sigh of relief. Gets another drink. Waits for Merle. _

oooOOOooo

He's nearly drifted off again in a haze of painkillers and exhaustion, when there's a soft knock and the door swings open. Carol stands there, tray in hand. The food smells better than anything he's ever smelled.

"I brought you dinner," she sets the tray down, and he stays huddled under the thin sheet, his only protection.

She stands at the door, almost as if she's waiting for something, or someone. "I just wanted to say…" she pauses, gathering her words. "You did more today for my little girl than her daddy did for her in his entire life." The admission is struggle, he can hear in her voice, filled with shame and self-recrimination. She grips the doorjamb, seems ready to go.

Then, she swoops down, and before he fully understands what's happening, her warm lips brush his bruised cheek. She's up and gone in a second, a hummingbird on a blossom. He pushes himself up without thought, perhaps to follow her flight. The sheet slips off his shoulder.

"Didn't do anything Rick or Shane wouldn't a'done," he grumbles, grabbing at the sheet, but her eyes have already flickered to the decimated skin on his back.

"I know," she replies, a sigh. "And you're every bit as good as them." She stops, bites out a few more words. "Every bit." And then she is gone, and he is left with the scant protection of the sheet, the dinner that she left at his bedside, and the whisper of her lips on his cheek.


	11. Loam

Carol washes dishes in Hershel's bright, sunny kitchen, thinking. Trying to be helpful, trying to carve out a spot in the group only she can fill, so they can't get rid of her. She's always wanted to belong. To fit in, be accepted, owned by someone. She thinks of the tags she sewed into Sophia's knapsack, her gym shorts:

_"This bag belongs to Sophia Peletier". _

To have a tag sewn on her heart, with someone's name on it: it's all she's ever wanted. Her daddy is just a set of dim memories of a long-faced, sad-eyed man who would kiss her curly head and puff his tobacco-laced breath in her face when he told her bedtime stories. Dead and in the ground by his own hand by the time she was struggling with the more popular, pretty girls in middle school.

Her mother had never been that interested in her to begin with, and, with her husband gone, the woman barely seemed to notice if Carol was in the room or not. Except to criticize, to point out fault. Dishes with food stuck to them, a skirt that was too short, a voice that was too sassy, too fresh. By the time she reached high school, Carol was like a flower someone has forgotten to water, with her pale eyes and pale hair and lanky frame. The popular, pretty girls didn't tease her anymore, because she wasn't worth the effort.

Her late teens and early twenties were a soft blur of duty and work and penance: taking care of her aging mother, cleaning house, pulling down pictures of teen heartthrobs and taping up posters of exotic places, culled for free from her part-time job at the travel agency. Going to church on Sunday and staring up at Jesus' worn face, which reminded her of her father, wondering what he had planned for her. Because she had no plans of her own.

She never admits it, but Ed was an accident. Going to the bar down the street with a few coworkers, sipping cautiously on a cold beer. Feeling like maybe these women, who were even older and plainer and more worn than she, could be her friends. Ed pulling up to the bar next to her, loudly asking for a shot of Jack. Brushing her elbow. Looking over disinterestedly, doing a double-take, turning back to her with a face that was still young, still nice-looking, before drink and hate and paranoia had turned it into a bloated ugly mask.

Seeing something in her. Responding. By the time she realized the courtship and marriage wasn't about love, but control, it was too late. Ed's name never made it onto her heart. And now, the only person she ever belonged to, her precious daughter, was probably dead.

She had admitted as much to Daryl, a few hours ago, in the stable. She was aghast that he was planning on going back out there, watching him with mild horror as he walked with obvious pain and effort, to saddle a horse. Who was this man, with his drug habit and flowers and dead, racist bully of a brother and his soft eyes and the spider web of scars clinging to his back? She looks out of the window above the sink, her eyes scanning the treeline, waiting for him to come back. Carol wants to see him again, despite their argument this morning, because she doesn't know what to expect from him. She needs more time to figure him out. And time, these days, seemed to stretch like melting taffy on small, sticky fingers.

oooOOOOooo

_She watches him struggle with the saddle, and her guilt overwhelms her. Why is this man looking so hard for _her _daughter? No one else thinks Sophia is alive, Shane has made that crystal clear, with his scoffing and badgering, but she could see, even Rick, Lori, Dale – every day, every hour, every minute, it becomes less and less likely they will find her alive. Or at all. _

_"We may not find her," she says to him, needing to say it out loud. To convince herself. The words rip at her gut, her heart, a burning pain that feels right. Something she deserves. And something else is twisting around inside of her, as well. She thinks of the perfect, white face of the flower sitting in the RV. "I can't lose you, too." My god. _What does she even mean by that? _Daryl is not hers, not remotely. She has never met someone so uninterested in belonging to anyone. The words are free and out in the air between them before she can think of how true they are. _

_He reacts as if she has taken her nails and scraped them, hard, across his scarred back. He starts, rips the saddle from the horse, snarls in pain and anger, clutching his wounded side. She reaches out for him, but he pushes her back, waves her off. Barks a warning as he stumbles in his hurry to get away: "Stupid bitch." She watches him go, feeling like he's finally gotten it right. _

ooooOOOOoooo

She gives the counter a final swipe, removes her apron. Considers what else she can do. Everyone else seems to have an important or vital task to accomplish, aside from her. Maybe she can go help Lori out, who doesn't seem to be quite right these days. Carol has an idea, a hunch, tickling at the corner of her mother's mind, but doesn't feel that it's her place to say anything. But she can quietly help Rick's wife out, regardless of her suspicions. Part of her knows Lori must be terrified. The other part is jealous of the deep love that exists between the Grimes. She dries her hands and turns to leave the kitchen. Let's out a small, startled yelp, drops the dishcloth. Daryl is leaning against the archway between the dining room and the kitchen, arms crossed.

"Didn't mean to startle ya," he rumbles softly.

She bends over to retrieve the napkin, her heart thudding for a muddle of reasons. "S'okay," she straightens up, tests out a smile. "You're stealthy. I didn't hear you come in. Been there long?"

He almost smiles, shakes his head, looks at the floor, up at her. "Want to show you somethin'". His arms drop to his sides, leaving him looking like a boy who wants a cookie before dinner.

Everything in stirring around in a confused soup in her stomach. She holds his gaze across the kitchen. _What else have I got to do? _She thinks. "Okay. Show me," she follows him out the door, wondering. Able to wonder.


	12. Nurse Log

**A/N: Um…so yeah. Sorry it's been awhile (for me) in updating, guys. Also, this is the first Caryl FF that I've written wherein I have gone back and edited TWO chapters. The first was based on a wise comment by ImOrca to Chapter 9, and it made the story better and stronger. The second is: I went back, of my own accord, to the last chapter and edited it to be in-canon. I had Carol reference something that doesn't happen until THIS chapter (Daryl saying "What else have I got to do?"), in the timeline of the show. So, as I noted last time, feel free to read the changes I made, if you have the inclination (or if you are a diehard canon Caryl-er and were shaking your head at my egregious mistake in the previous chapter).**

**Now – to the story!**

"A **nurse log** is a fallen tree which, as it decays, provides ecological facilitation to seedlings."

He realizes about an hour after he enters the woods that it's useless. The hole through his rib cage feels like a giant's taken a gloved hand full of nails and punched its way through his guts. He can handle the pain practically speaking, but it's distracting the shit out of him. He's not tracking the little girl, he's stumbling around like an asshole out here. _No point, man, _he takes a deep breath, swipes his hair away from his forehead. The giant's fist retreats from his torso a little, but something else tugs at him, somewhere deeper, less defined.

_"I can't lose you, too," her slate-colored eyes filling, nearly brimming with tears. _

When she said that back in the stable, something inside him had simultaneous leapt up and out, creating a spark, a frisson, a burst of light which emanated from that deep, undefined, untouched part of him. And, like a small animal hunkered down in the dark, safe place it has built for itself, the secret untouched part of him had lashed out at the light, swiping at the source, terrified and pissed off at the disruption of its life-long hibernation.

_"Stupid bitch," he choked out. What sounded like anger was, in fact, fear - fear and the desire to be far away from those tear-filled grey eyes and the undefined need obscuring her face like a caul. He tore out of the stable, tore some of the stitches Hershel had carefully woven into his ripped skin, all thoughts of taking a horse gone in his haste to be away from that place, from her._

The woods are thinning up ahead, and he's glad to see the end to the treeline. He knows Shane thinks he's a fool for even bein' out here, lookin' for Sophia. They all think she's dead, or worse. _Even Carol…_and that pisses him off more than anything. Who the hell is this woman, anyway? Sayin' crazy things to him, makin' him say even crazy things back.

He pushes through the underbrush, comes to where the woods terminate. He's on the far side of Hershel's property, the farmhouse small and distant. He really _is _distracted. He's looped around, not walking the straight, careful, gridded lines he usually does when he's tracking. He's by a small pond of standing water, its rim choked with reeds, long grasses and…

He approaches the cluster of white flowers, brushes a dirty finger across the edge of one perfectly fat, rounded petal. Remembers himself the other day, blathering on to Carol in the RV about the wailing mothers and the wise elders. It was a story from the farthest reaches from his childhood, and he remembers it mostly because it was told to him with such care and precision, by someone who he thinks almost loved him. Or who could have loved him, if given the chance.

_Everyone in the neighborhood just calls her 'Big Ma'. Which is some kinda joke, his eight-year-old self thinks, because Big Ma is one of the smallest women he's ever seen in his life. When he stands next to her, by her elbow at her old wood-burning stove, she's only half a head taller than he is, and just as wiry. Older than most people he knows, with skin the color of his daddy's leather work boots._

_She is stirring something on the stove, something white and creamy and specked with pieces of bacon. The air is filled with the smell of baking biscuits. He is here, with her, in her dingy but cheerful kitchen because his house is on fire. And his momma is dead. He doesn't know where his daddy and Merle are. Drinking, probably. The stuff that makes his eyes water when they breathe the fumes in his face._

_A few hours before, he came back on his bike, which he knows is a piece of crap, but it gets the job done. And all's he sees is every single goddamn (a swear, he knows, but everyone else does it) person on his block standin' like cows with their mouths hangin' open, starin' at this big, smoking wreck that kinda looks like his house would if something exploded inside of it. And the fire trucks and the sirens and someone wheeling out a person on a stretcher, covered in a white sheet spotted with red and black and gray. And the kids, who usually torment him, tell him in church-like tones that it's his momma, that's she's burned the damn place down. _

_As the guys who drive the ambulance lift the stretcher up, the tips of a few nicotine-stained fingers fall beneath the edge of the spotted white sheet, and Daryl knows with certainty that it IS his mother under there. He knows those fingers. Knows how they hold a cigarette and a bottle of cheap beer. How they feel when they smack him across the face, or, in rare moments, run through his tousled hair. He drops his bike, the other kids forgotten, and moves towards those fingertips. Nothing else seems to matter but touching them -_

_"Come with me," his outstretched hand is suddenly gripped by a gnarled one roughly the same size, and it breaks his hazy focus. It's Big Ma. The old lady from down the street who would holler at him for standing on her lawn, but then ask him to pick up all of the rotten crab apples, pays him a penny for each one he clears up. _

_And now he's standing in Big Ma's kitchen, and the smell of the food she's cooking is driving him crazy. He tries to sit patiently at the small, chipped plastic table that she pushed him towards, but he can't help it. He crowds her, ravenous for biscuits and bacon gravy. He can think of nothing else. _

_"Shoo," she says, pushing him aside with her bony hip. "Make yerself useful. Pull out the sweet tea" She gestures to the yellow refrigerator, where Daryl finds the pitcher. He pours the tea, careful not to spill. "Leave it there," Big Ma says to him. She's got the warm biscuits from the oven and she's topping them with heaping spoonfuls of white gravy. "Biscuits make you thirsty." _

_"So," she says, plonks the plates down on the table. "Dig in." She sits across from him, and, very lady-like, places a napkin on her lap, cuts into the heavy meal slowly. _

_He cannot help himself. He grabs his fork and begins shoveling it in, all warm and salty and buttery and delicious. He's nearly through the plate when he suddenly thinks of his mother's fingers, and the fact that he's not a clue where his Daddy and Merle are. The food lodges in his throat, and he coughs. Before he understands what's happening, the coughs turn to sobs, and he's weeping like he never will again in his life, spit and snot and tears and white gravy dripping off his face. _

_"'Bout through?" Big Ma says, once the storm of tears have passed, and he's hiccuping regularly. He chances a peak at her, and she's put her fork down, her meal barely touched. Her face is stony and serene, but her eyes are dark and warm. _

_He grabs his own neglected napkin, runs it across his cheeks and mouth. He nods. He looks at the remains of the dinner on his plate. He is no longer hungry. "It's not fair." He whispers to his remaining biscuit. _

_"No, it ain't," Big Ma replies. She removes a pack of cigarellos from her cardigan, lights one. It's sweet, spicy smoke, so different from the smell of cigarettes, fills the airs. "It ain't, at all. But there are worse things, boy-o." She squints at him, almost like she's sizing him up. "Your momma, she was a fool," Big Ma says, but not unkindly. "A beautiful, drunken fool married to a brute. And she was too young to die. You'll hear that a lot in the next coupla days. 'She was too young to die'. And it's true. But at least things happened in the order they should. Mother before child." She stops again, and Daryl looks at her, surprised to see tears in the old woman's eyes. "Other way 'round, _that's_ what's not fair. My Mattie, he went a'fore me. Only a bit older n' you. Thirty years ago, and it still breaks my heart, over and over. Each day." She pauses, taps her ashes into a coffee mug. "Only thing that keeps me goin' is hope. Hope that, maybe, this day, or the next, will be better. That someone's payin' attention to my tears and my broken heart." _

_Daryl doesn't know what to do. No adult in his life talks like this. He's known Big Ma since the Dixons moved onto this ramshackle block four years ago, and he's never heard her say so much. He's confused and sad and scared. The only person that ever paid him any mind other than to tell him what shit he was is dead. He thinks about when his daddy and Merle get back from wherever they are. Who will take care of him? He knows the answer: no one. He looks up again at Big Ma, looks at the half-full dinner plates. Feels the heat coming off the stove. Summons some courage from deep in his child's heart. _

_"I want to stay here, with you," he says. The words plop on to the table between them. "I'll clean up all of the apples, for free." _

_Big Ma's face shifts behind the smoke, he shifts in his chair. "We'll see." She finally replies. _

_He nods. It's better than nothing. He stays quiet, hoping she'll say more things to him. He likes the sound of her deep voice, so unexpected from such a small person. And miraculously, it works - she begins telling him a story:_

_"Back a long time ago, right afore the war between the North and South, the American soldiers, they started pushin' the Natives, the Indians, further and further west..." he listens to the whole story with rapt attention. He isn't even aware of the tears falling down his cheeks until his vision shimmers with them. When Big Ma finishes speaking, she leaves him for a moment, returned with a worn Bible. Opened it with a crack. Something flutters out._

_"A Cherokee Rose," Big Ma says, putting the dried, feather-light flower in his little boy's hand. "There's always hope," she says to him, her warm, wrinkled hand closing over it, making a safe place for the bloom._

oooOOOOooo

He stares for awhile at the living, fresh white of the blossoms, so different from the dead and brittle one he first saw sitting at Big Ma's tiny kitchen table.

"Big Ma," he mutters her name out loud, speaking to the flowers in front of him. It hurts his side, and something deeper, to say her name. She had tried, Daryl realizes now. She had tried, as hard as she could, to hang onto the scrap of a boy he was. But his daddy and Merle were each a force to be reckoned with, and together they were nearly impassable. He had stayed at her house the few days following his mother's death, making himself as useful as possible, showing his worth. But after his mother's funeral, the trio of Dixon men had moved into an even shabbier shack further down the road. He was stuck with his blood.

And then Big Ma died. Her real name had been Luella Mae Jenkins. Daryl hadn't know that until the preacher said it in the church. _"We pray for Luella Mae Jenkins, Big Ma to all'a us here."_

Big Ma had fed him. Fed his empty belly with white gravy and biscuits. Fed his little boy heart with a story of sadness and hope. He had surprised himself, sharing that story with Carol yesterday. But now he owes her more than that: he has to remind her there was hope. She seems to have forgotten that. And he is still pissed and scared, right, but he wants to find her, show her these white blossoms. He certainly doesn't have anything better to do. He heads towards the farmhouse.


End file.
